This Year’s Readers

NICK DYBEK

Nick Dybek is a recipient of a Granta New Voices selection, a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a Maytag Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches at Oregon State University. He is the author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man and The Verdun Affair.

OMAR EL AKKAD

Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian author and journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and numerous other locations around the world. He is the recipient of Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalism. His debut novel, American War, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and has been nominated for eight other awards. It has been translated into a dozen languages. Omar lives in the woods just south of Portland.

JOHN LARISON

John Larison is the author of four books. His most recent novel, Whiskey When We’re Dry, was named a Best Book by Entertainment Weekly, Goodreads, O Magazine, NPR’s All Things Considered, among others, and is currently in development for a screen adaptation. He lives with his family near Finley Wildlife Refuge.

DIONISIA MORALES

Dionisia Morales writes creative nonfiction. She grew up in New York City but discovered a love of the outdoors that brought her to Oregon in her late twenties. In her recent essay collection, Homing Instincts, she looks at the many ways in which we define “home” and wrestles with a bi-coastal identity that sometimes makes her wonder where she really belongs. Dionisia works as a publishing manager for the OSU Extension Service, where she gets to learn about everything from ponderosa pines to pollinators.

CHAD MURPHY

Chad Murphy is an assistant professor of management at Oregon State University. In his spare time he moonlights as the creator of LordBirthday—a series of lightly satirical cartoons, poems, and single-panel comics. First appearing on Instagram in the fall of 2015, Lord Birthday has recently made the leap to print, in a debut collection called How to Appear Normal at Social Events published by Andrews McMeel in March of 2018. Lord Birthday has been featured on NPR’s Invisibilia and was recently blurbed about in People Magazine.

ELENA PASSARELLO

Elena Passarello grew up in Snellville Georgia, a smallish town with the motto “Where Everybody’s Somebody.” Her two collections of essays are Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses, which won the 2018 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, made the 2017 best-of lists in the Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, and The New York Times, and has been translated into German, Italian, and Mandarin. She has won the Whiting Award for nonfiction as well as the award for Messiest Office among the Creative Writing faculty at Oregon State University. You can hear her on OPB every Saturday as the announcer/sidekick of Luke Burbank’s Live Wire radio hour.

SAM ROXAS-CHUA 姚

Sam Roxas-Chua 姚 is a poet and multi-disciplinary artist from Eugene, Oregon. He is the author of the books Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater (Lithic Press), Echolalia in Script – A Collection ofAsemic Writing (Orison Books) and the chapbook Fawn Language (Tebot Bach). Recent poems and artwork have appeared in Narrative, decembermagazine, and Cream City Review. In 2014, his poetry sequence Diary ofCollected Summers was awarded the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize. His asemic work has been exhibited at selected galleries including the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Sam is the director of The Requatorist, an organization dedicated to writing mentorship, publishing, and audio recording services.

LENI ZUMAS

Leni Zumas’ new novel, Red Clocks, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next List selection, and a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Fiction pick. Zumas is also the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator and the novel The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She has received grants and fellowships from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Originally from Washington, D.C., she now lives in Oregon and teaches creative writing at Portland State University.

Emcee JON RAYMOND

Jon Raymond is the author of three novels—Freebird, Rain Dragon, and TheHalf-Life, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2004—and the short-story collection Livability, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and winner of the Oregon Book Award. He is also the screenwriter of the film Meek’s Cutoff and co-writer of the films OldJoy and Wendy and Lucy, both based on his short fiction, and the film Night Moves. He also cowrote the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, winner of five Emmy Awards. Raymond’s writing has appeared in Tin House,TheVillage Voice,Bookforum, Artforum, Playboy, and other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Perkins, Bliss, Brassfield, & Pfender Quartet

The Perkins, Bliss, Brassfield, & Pfender Quartet features Audrey Perkins on vocals, John Bliss on guitar and mandolin, Ray Brassfield on bass, and Bill Pfender on clarinet.